


In Bed

by Sera_Clay



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-03 01:34:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 16,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2833307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sera_Clay/pseuds/Sera_Clay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzington. Small works and wips, not sure what will end up here. Possible fluff, romance, PWP, AU, humor. Will add warnings if any of them get too graphic/edgy.</p><p>Not my characters, just borrowing them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Practice Makes Perfect

Liz nestles close to Red, her head on his shoulder, their legs entwined. She fiddles idly with his chest hair, avoiding his sensitive nipples.

"That was incredible," she whispers. "I'm never going to be as amazing as you in bed, am I?"

Red chuckles. The deep sound resonates beneath her ear.

"No, Lizzie, you're not."

Her hand stops moving.

Red lifts his head from his pillow, presses a kiss into her tousled hair.

"Over the years, I've been with so many, many women - and you're stuck with only me."

"As if I could ever want anyone else."

Liz slides her hand down to his belly and splays her hand open, tucking the tip of one finger in his belly button.

He pulls her a little tighter.

"You can, however, become the world's foremost expert in exactly what pleases Raymond Reddington in bed."

"Working on it." There's a smug, possessive note in her voice.

Red chuckles again.

"Indeed you are."


	2. Forever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PWP.

Red bends his knees slightly and wraps his hands around her thighs, just above her knees. Holding her gaze, ever so slowly, he slides his hands up her stocking clad thighs and past her garters, pushing her little black skirt up to her waist and then inside out.

"I never want to leave you."

Red looks down and with tiny, precise movements of his hands, he tears apart one side, then the other, of her delicate panties. He drops the torn scrap of lace to the floor.

Liz can hear herself breathing, the tick of the kitchen clock, the neighbor's dog barking down the block.

"Take your blouse off for me, Lizzie" he says quietly. His fingers brush her garters, then explore her, deft, reverent.

She doesn't want to look down at what he's doing, so she looks at his face; he's tan and he appears well-rested, but his eyes are a little strange. If they weren't completely alone in her kitchen, she would say he looks frightened.

Afraid she'll stop him? Afraid she won't?

If she lets go of the counter she'll collapse. She spreads her legs a little wider.

"You," she manages, her voice shaking, "You take it off."

His fingers pause, then he swiftly unbuttons her blouse. She's wearing a new black strapless bra that was hard to hook up earlier in the evening; he removes it with one twist of his fingers and drops it to the floor.

"Red?"

He has two fingers of one hand back inside her and his other hand at her breast. The pressure is delicious, perfect. Better than when she touches herself.

"Forever, Lizzie, I want forever."

She clenches down on his fingers, fighting not to spasm.

Is this even real? Is this even happening?

Liz pants, then forces the words out.

"Kiss me, Red."

He shakes his head, shows her his teeth in a brief smile that's not a smile, but something else. Something that looks like pain. 

"You don't need kisses to decide, Lizzie."

He's adopting such a reasonable tone, but there's an obstinate set to his jaw. 

"Forever, or I walk away. All or nothing." 

It makes no sense. It's like some strange dream and she'll wake up alone in a knot of pillows, or he'll turn into a bird and fly away; or she'll start crying and he'll dissolve like an old memory.

"Forever, Red."

He falls to his knees on her kitchen floor, and his mouth is on her. She's over the top, trying not to scream, following where he takes her again and again.

Red looks up, still kneeling, his mouth glistening wet. He licks his lips and smiles. 

"Well, that's a good start, isn't it, Lizzie?"


	3. Leash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flirting, fluff.

"You can wait in the car - you don't have to come in. This really isn't your type of scene."

Red has parked in the dark, gravel parking lot behind the unmarked club, several rows deep with cars, trucks, and a row of Harleys.

"No, I need to do this. I just wish our costumes were reversed."

Liz is wearing a long trench coat buttoned to her neck, spike heels, and very little else - just scraps of red leather that barely cover her body at strategic points.

Red laughs uneasily.

"I hardly think Breitan would be willing to do business with me if I showed up on a leash."

Red holds up the black leather leash and rattles the clip on one end at Liz.

"Ready?"

Liz lays her head back against the headrest of the Mercedes, feels Red clip the leash to the studded collar at her neck.

He's wearing heavy boots, tight black jeans, a black shirt and a black leather vest. 

She gets out of the car, leash swinging, almost touching the ground, and stands still for a moment, finding her balance on her heels.

Red locks the car and offers Liz his arm, scooping up the leash and sliding one hand through the leather loop at the end.

"Keep your eyes down, don't speak unless I speak to you first, and for god's sake make sure your badge stays in your pocket."

"Red?"

Nodding at the doorman, Red pulls open the heavy door into the foyer of the club.

"Attitude" he whispers. "Do strive for the proper attitude."

Liz tries not to giggle as they sign fake names in a guest book and are ushered into the main room of the club.

As they step into the room, Red stops in front of her and unbuttons her overcoat.

"Display, you're meant to be on display," he reminds her.

Liz grins cheekily at him as her outfit is revealed.

"Oh. Lizzie."

Red's voice seems to have dropped an octave, and he's staring at her as if he's never seen a woman before.

Liz had tried on the little skirt and matching corset earlier in the day, and decided they made her look fat. So she went back to the store while Red and Dembe were closeted together on a conference call, and exchanged it for the tiny red leather outfit, something the painted, tattooed and pierced sales staff had all assured her was infinitely more flattering. It's barely decent, when she's standing still.

"Come on, Red, we've got a serial killer to catch" she says, peeking up at him from beneath her long, heavily mascaraed eyelashes. 

Red's mouth moves as if he's savoring an unexpected taste. He blinks rapidly. Liz shivers beneath his gaze.

"On your own head be it" he says at last, and he leads her on the leash into the crowd.


	4. First Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, drabble, one shot, dark, torture, romance

There's more than one mole in the bureau.

Red's certainly grateful to be rescued from the ministrations of the former sexual sadist, currently lying face down in a drying pool of his own blood, who benefited from that mole's information. Until now, Red's only consolation has been the knowledge that Dembe escaped the attack.

He's less than pleased to realize that it's Lizzie leading the strike team which discovers his naked, tormented body chained spread-eagle to a tilted surgical table in front of a large full length mirror.

It's Ressler who throws a coat over him.

Lizzie is intent on clearing the building. 

Red closes his eyes and wonders if she'll vomit when she reaches the last line of cages.

He has, more than once.

***

Red tolerates the ambulance, the IV, the jounce of the gurney down to the makeshift infirmary, deep within the Post Office. The doctors and nurses who administer potent pain relief, who clean and treat his many wounds, all wear surgical masks, but he can read their eyes. Pity, yes, but also hope.

The plastic surgeon works on him for a long time. Red tries to remain conscious, fighting his body's urgent desire for sleep.

He counts twelve sets of curtains. 

Are those all the survivors?

He can still hear their screams. Or maybe his own. 

Red never wants to see any of them again, not after what they were all forced to do to each other.

***

There's an older doctor at his side, with a tablet. Red focuses muzzily on the blue glow of the screen.

"That's everything for now."

The doctor gives him one last shot, barely a sting, then he lifts the metal sides of the narrow gurney, locks them in place. Reaches down, out of Red's line of vision. There's a clank and the gurney shifts as the wheels unlock.

Two men in dark suits approach. One pulls handcuffs off his belt.

Damn. After all the trouble they've gone to with his stitches.

Red starts to gather his energies as the man reaches towards his right wrist. It's already scored deep with purple bruises. 

"No." Lizzie's hands, one on his wrist, one fending off the cuffs. "I'll take responsibility."

Red blinks up at her.

She looks like hell.

He was held captive less than a week, and Liz looks as ragged as if she hasn't slept that whole time. Her dark hair is braided ruthlessly tight to her skull, wisps matted along her hair line, and her eyes are dark pits, devoid of her customary make-up, the whites bloodshot.

Her blouse and slacks are filthy, and she smells of gunpowder and drying blood.

"Director Cooper said ..."

Liz pins them with the full force of her glare.

"He's home in bed by now. You wanna wake him, tell him I can't handle this?"

They don't respond.

Liz wheels him away, the overhead lights down a long corridor passing overhead as Red tries to count them, tries to figure out where she's taking him.

***

She parks the gurney outside a shower, IV swinging. Red assumes it's a locker room, but he can't seem to turn his head to find out. He hears the rattle of the shower curtain, smells soap and floral shampoo, feels the moist warmth of steam.

Her hair is up in a towel and she's wearing a clean black sweat suit when she peers down at him again. Despite her freshly scrubbed skin, Liz looks at least ten years older than her age, her eyelids purple with fatigue, her bitten lips trembling.

'Almost there,' she whispers, then rolls him away.

Almost where?

***

Liz sets the brakes and Red hears a heavy door slam, a lock click into place.

"Finally" sighs Liz. They're in a square room, with a low ceiling, lit only by a small lamp.

"Where are we?" mumbles Red. There must have been something really excellent in that last shot, because he's fading fast.

"My room, we've all been assigned temporary quarters. For security."

Her pale face hovers over his.

"We'll start the debriefings tomorrow, but Red? Do you know why?"

He's not about to drag her into anything that involves the cabal. Not if he can help it.

"Sadists. They're like happy families."

His voice is hoarse from screaming, or was it begging? Red can't quite remember which he was doing when the team burst in. He doesn't want to remember what's been in his mouth over the course of the last few days.

"All alike?" Lizzie shakes her head, she always wants to understand. "Red, there were men in those cages, who weren't, who weren't men any more."

And exactly how close had he come to meeting that same fate?

He can't think of how to frame the question, but somehow she knows to answer him, anyway.

His Lizzie.

"You're going to make a full recovery. We got there in time."

"I'm pleased to know you care."

Did he say that out loud?

Her face comes abruptly closer, startling him briefly more awake.

"Raymond Reddington, are you making a pass at me?"

He gives her his sweetest, most innocent smile, the best smile his battered mouth can manage. Red can't feel most of his body by now, he's not sure he could kiss her if he tried. But he's willing to try, if she is.

"Oh, Red."

She's staring down at his face as if trying to find an uninjured bit of him. Blinking up at her, he fears she'll be unsuccessful.

"Close your eyes."

Gently, Liz kisses Red's eyelids, then runs her tongue along the rim of his lashes. Unwelcome tears well up at her tenderness. If he starts weeping, he may never stop. 

She licks the wetness away, then her mouth lingers over each eye.

Clean. He feels so safe and clean.

She's the second chance he never deserves, over and over again.

***

When Red wakes up in the morning and turns his head, Liz is sleeping on her side in the lower bunk of a metal bunk bed. His gurney is pulled up next to her, and she's stretched out one slender arm in her sleep and tucked her left hand under his covers.

Their first night together.

Red grins painfully through his cracked, swollen lips at her other hand, her gun hand, thrust under her pillow.

She's armed and dangerous, even in her sleep.

And she's protecting him.

For a man who's been actively tortured for almost a week, Red feels pretty damn good.

He lies there in his bandages, watching his Lizzie sleep. For now, that's more than enough.


	5. A Little Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, drabble, romance, angst. Just a sketch.

He's itinerant, asymmetrical, with a favorite cafe in every major city around the globe.

She loves her small home, fills it with carefully chosen antiques and textiles and books. So many books.

He loves people, telling stories, laughing and drinking in a crowd of men. Always the alpha.

She's happiest curled up on her couch with a cat in her lap. A contented introvert.

He has a private army on every continent now. He's collecting small governments as a hobby.

She's a respected profiler, in the process of writing her third textbook. She has worked her way up to a corner office, now.

On the all too rare occasions when he lets himself in at the back door, always at night, they have a routine. A little game.

"Where have you been this time?"

Red starts undressing the moment he walks in the front door.

"Just out and about. I'm pleased you waited up for me."

Liz is casual, as if he arrives home every night. She's always up until midnight, just in case.

"Of course, darling. Do you need a shower?"

"That would be lovely."

"I'll run the water."

She soaps a washcloth, joins him under the hot spray. Washes his back, her blue eyes intent for any new injuries, new scars.

He tells her she's beautiful, slides his soapy fingers over her modest curves as if exploring her body for the first time.

Their first time is in the shower.

Their second time varies. They talk and drink in their matching plush white bathrobes, wine or cognac or scotch or champagne. Soda water with lime, once, to wash down the pain pills.

"My turn," says Liz, when enough time has passed. She leads Red into the kitchen.

They alternate picking the room, the furniture, which of them will lead. At least that's how the second time starts.

Red looks around the small room.

"That counter, by the stove."

She drops her robe to the floor, hops up, spreads her thighs as wide as the narrow stretch of granite allows. Red licks his lips.

The third time is in the morning, sometimes early, sometimes late. Always in bed. They take pains to be tender with each other.

"I love you." 

They whisper promises to each other, praise, endearments.

Liz holds Red tight, makes it last as long as she can. She calls in sick to work, cancels plans, stays in bed until finally he stretches.

"I'd best be off. Places to go, crimes to commit."

He shaves, dresses in a fresh suit, puts on cologne. Half of her closet is his clothes, each outfit in a separate plastic dry cleaning bag. Ten years worth of memories.

"See you tonight, darling."

They embrace, kiss, his hands lingering in her hair.

"I'll be waiting."

She doesn't cry until the door closes behind him.


	6. Hoodie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, angst, G

Elizabeth Keen never thought much about kissing Raymond Reddington until she saw the surveillance footage, months old, of him striding down a street with a black hoodie pulled tight around his face.

He looked so alone. 

Yet somehow, infinitely more approachable than the wealthy, wary Concierge of Crime in the expensive suits and the omnipresent hats. With his jaded, knowing eyes that can turn so tender, and then so utterly dismissive.

Liz was flattered by his attention, once she managed to accustom herself to her abrupt transition from junior agent to full partner on a black site strike team. She drew lines, and he tried to cross them, but that was to be expected with older men.

The unfortunate familiarity of that particular type of interaction helps her resist his potent appeal. The way he comforts her, when no one else even suspects she needs comforting. The way he can make her smile, even on the most difficult days. 

Raymond Reddington knows exactly how to make a woman feel special. For all her education and training, she's just a small town girl from Nebraska. What can Liz possibly have to offer him in return?

But that man in the hoodie, she can imagine putting her arms around him. Can imagine his cold face pressed to hers, his mouth shockingly warm and wet in contrast as he yields to her kisses.

Liz lies on her back in her tiny, cold, studio apartment bed, and gives herself over to lengthy, improbable daydreams of Red's mouth, the pale oval of his face, the warmth of his big body through the soft thick cotton of the hoodie as she embraces him.

Outside, a black Mercedes draws up to the curb, idles as loose sheets of falling snow drift down to melt on the softly purring hood.

Two men get out of the backseat, look up at the apartment block. At one particular window.

"Aren't you going to ring, Raymond?" asks Dembe. He's wearing a wool hat, and a muffler, and a long coat buttoned to his chin.

Red is wearing a new black fedora, an extravagantly cut cashmere overcoat, an intricately patterned Italian scarf.

"No. Her light is out. Let her sleep."


	7. Yes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, romance, AU, drabble. G. A decision point is reached.

The fight doesn't end in the car.

Their luggage is piled all over the entry hall.

"I'm not your toy, to play with and set down again."

Elizabeth Keen is her career, in so many ways. It's her only safe outlet for her deepest interests, desires. He has to understand that about her.

"You can't possibly expect me to sit around the house and wait for you to come home from work every day?"

Red's response is bitter mockery, couched in reasonable. As if being an international criminal mastermind is a diversion, like tennis or golf.

Liz blinks back tears.

"Yes, that's exactly what I want you to do!"

The chasm that opens between them as they glare at each other across the room seems insurmountable.

Red in his shirtsleeves, neck of his shirt gaping to reveal that he's not wearing his customary undershirt. Because he knows she likes the shadows of his chest hair through fine white cotton.

Her red lace garter belt itches. She's not wearing her usual nylons, because she's been hoping against hope they will find a way on. And out. And through.

Together.

He's willing to burn the world down for her. She's just not willing to let it be her world. Her life.

"If you could have anything, Red, if I could give you anything, what would it be?"

His face twists. She's already given him her trust, her heart, her body. And he's a multi-millionaire. What does Red think she's offering him?

His phone rings.

"Hold that thought. I need to take this."

Liz has the faxed lab tests in her purse. 

Hostages to fortune. The most important decision they could ever make. 

It's not the right time, but if she doesn't make the offer, he's going to walk away. Walk out that door with his big shoulders slumped in defeat. And the next time she sees him, if she ever sees him again, it will be on surveillance footage, and he'll be cocky as hell once more. And his eyes will be cold and dead.

And if she does?

He may still walk away. 

He's been so meticulous about protection. Everything she's noticed, the items he's so carelessly admired, they could all have just been one more of his subtle lessons. She could be so wrong, and she's so scared. 

It's never simple with Red. It can't be. 

Or maybe it can.

With the sensation of holding her nose, jumping from a height into water of unknown depths, Liz fumbles in her purse for the fax, unfolds it, waves it at Red, who is pacing with his phone at his ear.

"Two hours. I'll be there."

He snaps the phone closed, fixes his eyes on the paper.

"I've had all the tests. There's nothing wrong with me. I could get pregnant tomorrow."

Red shrugs, elaborately. Spreads his hands.

"So? Tom lied. I assumed you knew."

Liz gasps. It's like being punched in the stomach.

"What does that change?" Red's voice has an edge she's never heard before. "You've been very careful, haven't you? Haven't I, Lizzie?"

"I want your baby, Red." She forces the words out, very quietly.

"No, you don't." His tone is poisonous, unforgiving. "You'll say anything right now to try to make me stay."

He reaches for his hat.

Oh god, oh god. He's leaving her.

"Wait, Red, look."

Liz drags open the top drawer of the antique desk, pushes the panel, hears Red turn on his heel as the hidden compartment under the desk drops open with a soft click. He's too curious, she knows he can't resist.

She gathers the items in both hands, drops them in a heap on the tooled leather surface of the desk. He stands at her side. She can feel the warmth of his body. 

"Just look, Red."

The baby dress from Acapulco, the silver cup from Munich. The knitted cashmere booties from the Mayfair street market in London.

She fumbles among the items, brings out the brochure with the house.

"I bought it with untraceable cash three months ago. Look." Liz flips open the brochure to the glossy photos of the backyard. "Look, Red, it has a play set."

"Three months ago you were still trying to negotiate the deal to end all deals."

His voice is quiet, neutral. He turns the brochure over, unfolds it.

Liz is not going to cry. She's just not going to.

"I've been trying to find a world where we can live together. Where we can be a family."

Red cocks his head, looks down his nose at her. Speaks so mildly. Like bells tolling for a funeral.

"And you thought I wanted this?"

"I want this, Red."

She meets his eyes, feels her heart rate slow as he just stares at her with that faint air of curiosity that always means 'prove it.' Beyond his poker face - this is the face he uses when he meets new clients. The kind of clients he might have to kill.

He no longer scares her. Nothing much does, any more. Except the prospect of losing him.

"I want your babies, Red. I want to marry you in Rome, and honeymoon on a sailboat in Greece, and yes, come home from work to you every evening."

His hands holding the brochure tremble.

"I want you to be the first person I see every morning and the last one at night. I want to grow old together, I want to learn to finish your sentences the way you can finish mine."

Red gives little shake of his head, as it to try and clear it.

"I want a little boy and I want to name him Sam. I want a little girl who takes ballet."

His eyes go wide and dark as if she just struck him across the face. 

"I want to be a part of you forever, Red, I want to be your family."

The space between them vibrates soundlessly with emotion.

"Please Red, for me."

He licks his lips, reaches up to scratch the side of his head with one finger. 

"This is why you saved me from the fire, Red. Because I was born for you."

Doubt, and a desperate will to trust her, to trust himself, flicker in his expressive eyes.

She'd fall to her knees and beg him, but Liz knows Red too well for that.

She steps close, reaches up, cradles his beloved face in her hands.

"Say 'Yes, Mrs. Reddington'," she orders him with a fierce smile. "Because we both know you're not going to take my name."

Their gazes lock.

"You can do better .." he begins.

"You've never been a fool before." Liz grits her teeth at him.

"Oh, but I have."

It's the first intimation she's ever received that Red's first wife betrayed him.

"Not with me."

"No." He takes a shuddering breath. "No, not with you."

It's not an apology, but it's enough.

"Then I take it that's a yes."

Liz picks the maroon leather ring box from the pile on the desk, slides a plain, wide band onto Red's finger.

"There," she says with patent satisfaction. Ignoring how hard her hands are shaking. "All mine."

He turns the ring with his thumb, looking down at it. 

"So, where are you going in the next two hours?"

Liz looks down at the desk as she asks the question, starts folding the tiny clothes. Giving Red time to collect himself again.

"Majorca, unfortunately."

"Then I'll expect a ring, when you get back?"

Gravely, Red lifts her left hand to his lips, kisses her ring finger, murmurs into her palm as he turns her hand over and trails kisses up the hollow of her palm to the sensitive skin of her wrist.

"Yes, Mrs. Reddington."


	8. Choose, and Choose Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, angst, romance. May end up as a chapter fic. Currently G, sad.

"This is a foolish plan."

Red stares at Dembe as if he's grown horns on his head. The big man sighs.

"Everything is prepared, Raymond."

"Then let's get going, shall we?"

***

The small yacht is fast, beautiful, shining white, but the interior is overly opulent. Not a charter; Red must have borrowed it for this risky little meeting. He's been living aboard for more than a week when she joins him.

Liz would normally be investigating all the cupboards, trying to glean one more small detail about Red's private life, but she's in the front head, throwing up.

She hopes the agents who are listening in are getting queasy. The constant surveillance is getting old. On her knees, she wipes her mouth, remembering the odd tenderness of Red's kiss as he welcomed her aboard.

Their intimacy is so new that she's still grasping at it, tugging, trying to be sure it's real. Like pinching herself in the darkness as she lies cradled in his arms.

How can something so achingly perfect be real?

Shots. Shouting.

Liz has her weapon out, runs through the galley, paused at the ladder. Feeling horribly exposed in just her swimsuit with her hair twisted up away from her face in a plastic clip.

An engine revs. The small boat sways beneath her, caught in an unexpected wake. Rocks, as if still under sail.

Men shouting.

"Get up top, Keen! Now!"

Ressler's angry whisper in her ear bug. Something must be going horribly wrong, for him to break radio silence.

***

"Let's go!"

Men with guns, ignoring her. Two motor boats, filled with men.

A lax figure in a loose yellow rubber slicker, face down in the ocean. Pink tinged foam as she stares down in horror, one hand on her weapon, the other on the narrow metal safety railing.

She knows the curve of that bare head, those pale, bare calves, the dark blue and white swim trunks just visible beneath the hem of the slicker. Everything in her life starts to tilt, soundlessly, down an impossibly deep hole. As deep as the ocean.

"Shit, shit!"

It's Ressler, he's activated the video cam on the mast.

There's a snapping sound, and the sailboat starts to move, the narrow sail in front, the spinnaker, Red called it, catching gusts of air. The wheel steadies.

The autopilot.

They are a hundred feet away already, she can't keep her eye on the floating figure.

She runs to the wheel, shuts off the autopilot, tries to turn the sailboat, start the engine. Wrestle down the sails, the ropes burning her palms.

Behind her, she hears the small boats zoom away.

By the time she gets back, there's only a yellow slicker floating on the waves, arms outstretched as if in entreaty.

***

Liz doesn't know enough to sail the boat back within sight of the coast, so she just sits on the deck and waits.

She's wearing Red's straw hat from his closet downstairs, and his long dark blue robe, that also smells like him.

The coast guard ferries her over, takes the sailboat in tow. Someone bags up the yellow slicker she managed to gaff aboard.

Three bullet holes.

They try to debrief her in the hotel suite after her shower, but she just stares at them, wet hair dripping down her neck.

Ressler sleeps on the couch as Liz lies alone in the big bed with so many pillows, layers of comforters, sleeping tablets she's not willing to take on the bedside table.

In the morning, she knows for sure. She's in a rococco marble bathroom, not a tilting sailboat, but she's every bit as violently ill. The tester she bought last week, concealed in the tube of a tampon, confirms it.

"I need to speak with Dembe," she tells Ressler over coffee. She must drink the coffee. Just one cup.

But he's unavailable.

The car will be here soon, to take her to the airport. Back to the Post Office.

"I need a little time," she tells Ressler, "I just need to sit alone in the sun. I'll be by the pool."

She's wearing her bathing suit, a white hotel robe that's thick enough to conceal her holster, and Red's hat atop her tightly braided hair. Flip flops. Ressler nods. He's going to watch her from the balcony, that's predictable.

Liz lies by the pool for an hour. Makes her way towards the ladies room. Turns and looks up to give Ressler a little wave.

Then she's gone.

****

The evening sun is setting, orange and coral and peach. The warm air smells like salt mixed with smoke from the fire pit.

"Just one more day, Dembe. We need this contract, you'll see, he'll be back with the right answer by tomorrow at noon."

"I do not like being out of touch like this," Dembe responds. "You do not trust my intuition enough."

"I'm sure Lizzie has it all figured out. The dye bags in the locker, the scuba gear, the bullet holes in the second slicker, everything." Red lifts his glass, filled with fine aged rum, and takes a puff of his cigar. "We'll be back where we can call her soon, and you'll see."

***

Liz buys a short black dress and sneakers at Goodwill, hair dye and a handful of silver bracelets from the clearance aisle at Wal-Mart. Steals a bicycle outside a dive bar. From a pay phone on the interstate, just over the county line, she dials the phone number she wrote on her hand with marker pen.

Liz had a friend named Kelly in high school. Her father was the chief of police. But these women got Kelly out, saved her. Liz got just one postcard, more than a year later, from Canada. It was signed Kelly and Kenny.

"Are you Samantha?"

"Yeah."

The women is middle-aged, with luminous green eyes and the cracked, fissured lips of a smoker.

She opens the door to the Lexus and Liz gets in.

"He wants to kill me, and my baby" she says softly, looks down at the immaculate floor mats, which still bear the vacuum marks of professional cleaning.

"Drink some water. We''ll be driving for a while."

The woman hands her a bottle of Fiji water. Liz drinks thankfully.

"You don't have any family?" The woman asks her in a quiet, non-judgmental voice.

Liz shakes her head, her layered hair, in newly bright shades of white blond, black, and pink, falling over her face.

"He killed my father.." she begins, and then it comes crashing down on her, and she sobs, just once, as if someone stuck a knife in her gut, the way Zamani did to Tom, and now she too has to live with the scar. She clutches her still flat belly, as if she's about to vomit. Although she hasn't eaten anything yet today.

"Drink more water" says the woman, trying to sound calm, but her voice wobbles. Liz lays her head back against the leather headrest and they drive.


	9. Kaleidoscope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, Red and Liz on a couch. Drabble.

So Lizzie had sex with Tom, even knowing what he was?

Raymond Reddington turns the thought over in his mind, allowing what he knows about Elizabeth Keen to shift and change like the colors in a kaleidoscope.

Everything moving at once, forming a completely different pattern.

Sweet, earnest Lizzie, who needs to be protected, disappears. Like the phantom she's always been in Sam's infrequent calls over the years.

He's seen her decisive, murderous, close to losing control. Eyes alight with exhilaration, intelligence, deadly resolve.

He promised her once that he's not going to let anything happen to her.

But it already has.

Red can't let her go. Not now. 

She's not the precocious child he thought at first. She's a worthy mate.

All that remains to be seen is whether he has the time, the patience, the skill to convince her of that as well.

Time is the worst of it. They have so little time alone. Red's already survived so much longer than he ever expected.

If he could even once hear Lizzie speak his name, his real name, with love. Assuming she's still capable of love.

"Red. I need your help."

She comes though the door as if he's conjured her, tosses her overcoat on the back of the couch. Spreads out a series of files, photographs, a packet of evidence bags containing intriguing little items. They almost cover the coffee table.

"Wine first, Lizzie," he tells her, hands her a goblet, winces inwardly as she swallows the fine aged Burgundy with a grimace.

"This man," she stabs a photo with one finger. She has French nails this week, an enormous improvement over the beige polish of last week. "He's been seen in Warsaw, then Singapore."

Red gives the photo a casual glance, then sits back, taking a sip of his own wine. He lays his arm on the back of the sofa, crosses his legs towards Lizzie.

Watches her react by turning towards him just a little.

Good, that's very good.

"How have you been, Lizzie?" he ventures, tilting his head.

Liz leans forward, lays her hand on his thigh. High up on his thigh.

Red freezes, just for a moment.

"He's most likely the contract killer we've been looking for," she continues, staring at Red a little coldly, as if taking inventory. Then Liz gives his thigh a little pat, almost hard enough to be a slap. Reaches for the file once again.

Heat blooms from that spot, floods him with bitter desire.

Use or be used.

"He's overpaid for what he does," responds Red, setting his glass down and reaching for a different photograph. "He's more likely to be your man, less precise, but much less mess, afterward."

Liz gives him a little nod, drains her wine glass.

"Let's do this again, sometime," she tells him, gathering up the files. Straightening them into a neat pile that gladdens his orderly heart.

No, he won't touch her. It's too soon. 

"My door is always open, Lizzie," Red gestures theatrically, turning the words aslant. "Whatever you need."

That may have been a bit much.

"You hold back, Red," she says, her blue eyes narrow, calculating. Still just sitting there. "Most women prefer a bit more ..."

He takes the risk. She's the one starting this, after all these months of working together.

"Not you, Lizzie."

She gives a little shrug, opens her hands as if in surrender.

"Does it matter?"

She's still in her work suit and blouse, high, polished heels. She's going back to the Post Office now. She'll probably be there all night.

He discards all evasions, hands her the truth like a gift.

"It does to me."

Holding his gaze, Liz lifts her own fingers to her lips, presses a kiss to them. Very slowly, she reaches for his thigh, presses those fingers to the exact spot she slapped.

He blinks, lets her see his desire in the twist of his mouth, but doesn't move.

"I'll see you soon, then."

She gathers up the files, shrugs into her overcoat, and she's gone.

Red reaches for the bottle, pours the rest of it into his glass, takes a hefty swallow with a shocking disregard for the fine old wine.

She'll be back.


	10. What to Expect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, drabble, AU, romance. Red and Liz try to say good-bye.

Liz didn't know what to expect when she said yes. She still doesn't.

The task force just disbanded the previous week, all members highly decorated. Promoted to varying positions of influence and responsibility.

Red has his immunity now, publicly granted, impossible to revoke.

Three years of advance and retreat. Death and despair, hope and impossible absolution.

She's not quite sure how she ended up naked in bed with Raymond Reddington.

No, that's a lie.

He asked her.

Dembe calls her, and tells her Red is leaving the next morning for some lodge in Peru, and Liz is in a cab to his address, brushing her hair and frantically touching up her make-up in the half-light of dusk, before she has time to decide what to say to him.

Red greets her in his shirtsleeves, offers her wine, makes space on the narrow, uncomfortable antique sofa that dominates the living room of his latest temporary domicile. There's no sign of Dembe.

A carefully laid fire, big chunks of aged oak, is blazing in the wide colonial fireplace.

That must have been how it happened. The warmth and intimacy of the fire.

"I don't know how to say good-bye, Red," she finally admits, after they've fenced and joked and verbally patted each other on the back, somewhat gingerly given how close the last blacklister came to handing them an apocalyptic defeat.

"Spend the night with me."

Red sniffs and widens his gaze as she turns astonished eyes to him, her wine glass tilting. He reaches out with the speed that always astonishes her, his reflexes tuned so much higher than her own, for all her youth and training. Catches the glass by catching her wrist.

His fingers are so warm.

"One night."

His expression is so grave.

"Ok." Liz shrugs, feeling helpless.

She doesn't want him to leave. All her words have deserted her.

"My room is upstairs."

She turns her gaze from the shifting flames of fire. Red is on his feet, holding out his hand to her. He's wearing that somewhat remote expression he often affects, as if he could care less what she does.

Liz takes his hand, walks upstairs with him as the world narrows impossibly to the elegantly patterned carpet on the wide curving staircase, the broad landing, his bedroom with a high four poster bed.

There's a fireplace in this room too, with a modest fire already starting to die down.

Red shuts the door, turns off the overhead light.

The room glows softly orange, deep shadows in every corner.

Liz undresses completely, dropping her clothing on the floor, then climbs into bed. She turns on her side toward the middle of the bed, stretching then curling her knees up against the cool of the freshly laundered sheets.

She doesn't watch Red undress all the way. It takes him a while; he hangs up each article of clothing in the closet. Gives her plenty of time to take in the horrific scarring on his back, ridged and whorled in the firelight.

She's seen the photographs. 

It's not the same in person.

At last he's lying next to her, facing her beneath the covers. Their heads on their feather pillows, their naked bodies close enough to touch.

Liz reaches out, fumbles for his hands. 

"Lizzie." 

Red lifts their joined hands to his mouth, kisses her fingers.

She doesn't know what to expect.

He's looking at her in mute appeal, the light catching on his thick blond eyelashes as he blinks at her.

Oh. He doesn't know what to expect, either.

"You know that I don't want you to go?"

Somehow, the words come easily to her, the words she's been trying and failing to say to him for the past week.

"Oh, Lizzie."

There's warmth and regret in his tone, but no rejection. Just acknowledgment.

She re-examines her conclusions.

"You asked me to arrange the visas, the passport, funds."

Red gives a little shrug, presses another kiss to her fingers.

In the firelight, Liz studies his familiar face, the burnished silver of his sideburns, the deep circles under his eyes that never completely fade even when he's fully rested.

"You, me, what are we?" she asks him in a whisper.

"A cautionary tale?" Red suggests, belying his words with further kisses on each of her fingers. His lips are so soft. 

She can't expect anything. 

It's a wonder they both survived, relatively unscathed except for a few new scars, and their shared phobia about small dark spaces.

She and Red lay trapped with their bodies pressed together for so many hours, buried alive, and all either of them thought about was whether they would smother and die there.

No, that's another lie.

She loved the warmth of his big, overdressed frame, the way he told her long, almost pointless anecdotes to distract her in the darkness. The way their bodies fit together, responded to each other, never admitted or acknowledged after they were rescued.

"You want more than one night," she whispers back. Willing it to be true. "You don't want to leave me."

His mouth twitches.

"I'm a foolish old man, Lizzie," he responds, whispering too. "One night is enough."

He sounds so resigned. 

Very slowly, Liz tugs their joined hands to her mouth, presses kisses to Red's fingers. Licks the tips of each finger, running her tongue along the edge of each smoothly filed nail. He has such well-tended hands, she might as well start with that.

"Not for me," she whispers back. 

Elizabeth Keen is starting a list of the things she loves about Raymond Reddington.

The way he opens his mouth so willingly when she leans closer and kisses him, the texture of his skin, his hair as she presses herself against him. The way he meets her halfway, paces himself, leaves her spiraling down from speechless ecstasy to hold her against him with just the right pressure.

Liz feels safe, not trapped. Cherished, not constrained.

It's her decision to make. It has to be.

"Stay" she whispers against his chest, as if her words will fill his heart. "Don't ever leave me, Red. Not ever."

"As long as you'll have me, Lizzie," Red finally promises. His deep voice is husky and she feels him tremble against her. Feels the trembling ripple through her own body, a joy so intense she wants to weep. 

It's clearly going to be a very long list.


	11. No Return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, drabble, angst, romance.

There's a point of no return.

The bureau has extracted what it wants and needs from Raymond Reddington.

There's been another terrorist attack on American soil, so the blacklisters are low priority for now. They stash him unceremoniously in a supermax prison, under an assumed name. Disband the task force. Assign both Elizabeth Keen and Donald Ressler to the China bureau. 

Not the office in Beijing. Rural China.

The news reaches her in a handwritten letter, addressed to Ressler.

Harold Cooper sent it through FBI channels, meaning that a man in goggles roared through the village on a motorbike at midnight, pushed the slim green envelope under the front door of their small office labeled Import/Export along with the rest of their official dispatches.

Ressler sits her down, tells her first, then hands her the letter.

Reddington is dead. Suicide.

It's taken a while for the news to reach Cooper through the grapevine. He has no details to share, save that the body was cremated. Unclaimed at the supermax morgue. Just nameless ashes, now.

Tears rolling down her cheeks, Liz sits staring at the one page letter. 

Suicide is despair writ large. 

She's been waiting almost a year now for Dembe to appear. She doesn't understand why he hasn't.

But she hasn't given up hope.

She thinks about Red every day, in between the deadly dull code work she and Ressler are doing, punctuated by brief missions fraught with tension and fear. Neither of them speak good Uighur. 

There may be terrorists here, but she knows now why foreign agents are rotated home so regularly. She and Ressler have been here far too long. They laugh at dark, terrible things, things that aren't funny, and they drink too much.

Of all the god awful things to mention in a condolence letter, Red giving himself over to torture and death to save her has to be the most grotesque.

'Remember how he came out of the box, for you.'

She hasn't saved Red's life in return, she's just been waiting out her time like a good girl, hoping somehow everything will come right in the end. Cooper never stuck her as cruel, before.

"What do you see, Liz?" Ressler asks her, his eyes on her face. He's lost weight steadily since arriving here, and his intent eyes burn in his bony face beneath his overlong red hair.

She taps the letter.

Ressler takes it from her shaking fingers, reads the sentence as she rubs at her wet face despite the continuing flow of tears.

"How?" he says scornfully. "He pulled off the tourniquet, held a gun to my head, told me I was of no use to him any more." 

His tone is bitter. Ressler still limps, first thing in the morning, whenever it freezes. He used to be grateful to Reddington for saving his life. Now he resents everything, including his own existence.

"Oh," says Liz, remembering all at once. She snatches back the letter.

"How .. he .. came ..out."

Her hands are shaking so hard, but she's alive again.

"The password."

She says the words like a prayer, watches understanding bloom in Ressler's bloodshot eyes.

"Don?"

She never calls him anything but Ressler.

He just nods. He knows her so well now.

Thank the god of fools and madmen for Harold Cooper. For this one last chance.

***

The small news note reads 'Elizabeth Keen, decorated FBI agent, dies in tragic accident.'

The obituary in the Lincoln Journal Star acknowledges the suicide, but misspells the name of the bridge. 

Dembe receives full details through a contact at the FBI.

He's not a Christian anymore, but he goes to the basilica in Rome and lights candles for the small woman with the big blue eyes, who once loved Raymond Reddington.

***

The white coral sand is hot beneath her bare feet. She has one small canvas bag, slung over her right shoulder, a loose white mesh dress over a blue bikini, a pair of cheap woven leather sandals in her left hand.

And the memory of Mr. Kaplan's joyful tears to light her way.

She turns and looks up, raises her hand to shield her eyes. Squints to watch the small seaplane bank towards the high line of clouds to the south.

Only a few hundred yards further.

She can see the thatched roof already, shaded by palms. A small blue sailboat bobs at anchor just offshore.

There's a dirt path inland, traversed only by bicycles and dogs and islander feet.

But she chose the beach.

As she gets closer, the reality of it clutches at her heart.

Forever. Forever.

They're both dead now.

He's sitting in a chair looking out at the water, a cigar dangling from the fingers of his left hand, a plastic cup in his right.

She trudges up to him, stands drinking in what she can see of his profile beneath a battered panama hat. He's wearing tattered navy shorts and a collarless blue shirt unbuttoned to his waist.

He turns his blotched face towards her. 

"I never believed in ghosts," he comments, slurring his words only slightly. "Have you some message for me from the great beyond?"

There's an empty bottle on the low table in front of him, another on its side in the sand. There's crumpled newspaper under the table, each sheet crushed into tiny balls. 

Ah.

Mr. Kaplan warned her this might happen.

She drops her bag and her sandals, turns in a slow circle.

"Like my dress, Red? I bought it from Balenciaga."

He sobs, just once.

Not enough.

Liz takes two steps, pulls her skirt up, straddles his bare thighs. Brushes his shirt aside to lay her palms flat on his bare chest.

He stares at her, mouth open, the corner of one eye twitching slightly.

"I'm real. And I'm here to stay."

Still nothing. 

"Aren't you going to kiss me, Red? Kiss me like Havana?"

Finally he drops the cigar, the plastic cup.

Red's arms come around her, hold her so tight. Liz clings right back to him, for a time held too close for kisses, for words.

They have all the time in the world, now.

At long last.

***

One night in Cuba, more than a year ago. Unthinkable that it could have so altered the fixed purpose of their single-minded lives.

But for both of them, it was enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The password was 'Romeo.'


	12. Damaged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, fragment, hurt/comfort, angst, damaged!Liz, AU.

"Why, why do I feel like this? Why is this happening?"

Elizabeth Keen paces up and down in the overdecorated hotel bedroom, all green and gold and gilded. Red stands between her and the locked door to the sitting room of the suite, a particularly sardonic expression decorating his bruised face.

"What did you do to me?" She clutches her hair, feels for her weapon, once again finds her holster empty. "What did you give me? Some drug?"

She hasn't slept for three days. The blacklister who kidnapped her, whose face she can no longer remember, had a taste for chemistry, kept her awake, experimented on her with psychoactive drugs. Even shot her up with a drug that amplified body sensations, especially, but not only, pain.

Trying to induce her give him Red's location. 

The third day, he stopped asking. Told her Reddington was dead, started asking about Dembe.

When Red's extraction team finally found her, killed the blacklister and his men, and carried her out, the blacklister's hypnotist was just finishing with her. The heavily armed men bundled her into a van, handed her an open bottle of water, drove her a few blocks away while she gulped it down greedily. 

She was so thirsty, but she couldn't remember why. Only that someone killed Red, and now they are after Dembe.

Then the doors at the back of the van opened, and Red was there. 

And Liz flung herself into his arms. Clung to him, crying hysterically. Pressed their lips together, ravaged his unresisting, unresponding mouth. Then hauled off and hit him, so hard he staggered, before Dembe grabbed her arms.

"It was just water, Lizzie."

Red keeps saying that. 

But there's got to be some reason she feels like this. When she looks at him, she doesn't see the criminal, the mentor, the mastermind who rescues her, again and again.

All she sees is the man.

Her skin itches and burns beneath her clothes. She longs to strip off everything she's wearing, tear open Red's vest and shirt, buttons flying everywhere. She's ravenous for his mouth, his hands on her. She's felt this way from the first moment she touched him at the back of the van.

"Roofies? Or something new? Something one of your criminal friends has cooked up?"

She's trying to question him rationally, despite the insane urge to kick his legs out from under him, tie him down, force herself on him. Liz can't keep her eyes off his broad chest, off his crotch, though there's nothing to see, just one of his expensive three piece suits, opaque, impenetrable.

"You're overwrought, Lizzie," says Red again. "It's some sort of a reaction to what you were given while you were held captive. Not anything I, or my people, gave to you. It will pass, given time."

"It will not!" Liz screams at him. 

He stares at her, blinking in that annoying way he does when he refuses to answer questions.

It's getting worse, not better. It's all Liz can do to keep her clothes on.

She's violently rejected the idea of a shower or bath. She threw a chair at him when he suggested a sleeping medication.

Red dodges flying chairs with tremendous aplomb.

She can't go back to the Post Office like this. It feels like her mind has cracked in two.

Liz vaguely remembers sobbing intermittently for almost 24 hours, mourning Red. But she was mourning the man who taught her both with his words and by example, who nurtured her career and made her famous in select FBI circles. More cases closed in a year than any other agent. Ever.

"Just tell me what you gave me?" she begs him. "Please, please Red, if you ever loved me ..."

He's been so patient, so calm, until now.

"That's enough, Lizzie."

His pupils are wide with emotion, for all that he's still got a tight little smile pinned on his face.

"No, it's not!" she screams, looking around her for something to throw. The lamps are bolted down, the bedside phone and clock radio are already in pieces. "If you ever loved me, if you ever loved anyone in this life, you will either tell me what you've done to me, or take me to that bed."

She points behind her at the hotel bed, the covers rumpled.

"I can't bear this any longer," she sobs. 

She wants him spread out for her like a meal, wants to do to his body all the things she would never do with Tom. How could she have thought herself cold? 

"Please, Red, please."

Liz drops to her knees, gauges the distance to take him down. He remains standing near the bedroom door, not approaching her, wary. His ankles, let alone knees, safely out of range.

She can't fight much longer. Why, why won't he just tell her?

"Get on the bed, Lizzie."

She looks up at Red.

He's unbuttoned his vest, hands at his belt buckle.

Sweet relief floods through her.

She crawls up on the bed with another sob. Lies on her back. Spreads her legs.

What did he do to her? Why is this happening?

She hears Red approach the bed, cautiously.

Liz takes a handful of the covers in each hand, clings to them hard, as if she's trying not fall. He'll stop if she strikes him.

"Oh Lizzie."

She's never heard his voice like this, it echoes inside her head. She waits, quivering as he leans carefully over the bed, examining her face.

She opens her mouth for his kiss, whimpers his name.

His fist comes out of nowhere, a brilliant explosion of pain, and she's gone.

***

"You should call Cooper." 

Dembe's tone is flat. His best version of non-judgmental is still not very good.

"I want to be with her when she wakes up," returns Red, an ice pack pressed to his face with one hand, a stiff drink in the other.

The powerful sedative his private physician gave her should wear off soon. He needs to know if she's still delusional. Red hates hypnotists even more than he hates clowns.

"You're exhausted. Not thinking clearly."

"I'm rested enough." Red's mouth twists at the thought of slipping into bed with Lizzie, holding her safely unconscious body against him. But there are some things even he won't do.

Not least of the reasons is that it would be unbearable to hold her once, then never again.

"Red?" Liz calls out in a sleepy voice.

Dembe shakes his head, takes up his post outside the bedroom door.

Red enters the room, closes the door behind him. Turns to face Liz, who is lying on her back beneath the covers in the very center of the bed.

"Where are we?"

"The Cardington Arms," Red responds. "We're in Connecticut, Lizzie."

Emboldened by her puzzled smile, he sits at the very foot of the bed. Smiles warmly at her, his best wordless version of 'I'm here, you're safe.'

She covers her face with both hands.

"Oh god Red, I kissed you."

"And almost broke my jaw," he responds, daring to reach out and give one of her feet a little pat through the covers.

She shakes her head, hands still hiding her face.

"I thought you were dead," she says, her breath coming in gasps. "And then I saw you."

"You had an idiosyncratic reaction to the drugs you were given," he responds in a soothing tone. "And hypnosis too - that was a nasty bit of business. No harm done, save that my hotel bill will be much higher than expected."

Liz shakes her head.

"Oh Red, I'm so sorry."

He gives her foot another gentle pat, then a squeeze.

She turns her bruised wrists in front of her face, examining the long cotton sleeves of the nightgown she's wearing.

"A nurse bathed and dressed you, while you were sleeping."

She looks over at him, looks away as if something in his face hurts her.

"A female nurse."

Red gives her foot another squeeze.

"Lizzie .." he begins.

She's covering her face again.

"I still feel it" she blurts out.

Red sits a little straighter.

"Do you feel at all violent?"

Liz shakes her head.

"No, but your hand ... on my foot."

He lifts it off, turns his hand in the air and looks at it, bemused.

"Oh, it hurts when you stop." Her voice trembles.

"Your nervous system is overloaded" pronounces Red with great authority and no knowledge of whether he's correct or not. 

His doctor could offer no predictions for recovery, given the number of substances she's been forced to ingest. Let alone the unknown script the recently deceased hypnotist implanted in her damaged mind.

"Could you just lie on top of the covers and hold me, just for a little while? Please, Red?"

He swallows hard.

"Lizzie?"

She holds out her arms to him. "It feels like I'm dying, just looking at you, and not allowed to touch you."

Red shakes his head, defenseless. He knows all about helpless yearning.

"You're allowed, Lizzie," he answers her. "You're always allowed."

Very carefully, he moves up to the head of the bed, lies down beside her, tucks her head against his chest.

"Ohhhh." 

He's never heard her sound so contented before.

"You're safe with me, Lizzie," he assures her.

She nestles close, presses little kisses through his shirt. Her eyes close once more.

He'd be wise not to sleep. But she feels so warm, so perfect, in his embrace.

Dembe opens the door just a crack, peers in. Rolls his eyes.

Red looks down at Liz, presses the lightest of kisses to the top of her head.

Dembe lets himself in, shuts the door, takes a seat on the floor with his back against it. On guard in case the mania, the violence, recurs.

Red can finally sleep, now. 

He tells himself a little story as he closes his eyes, shifts his arms to hold Liz closer against him.

Elizabeth Keen loves him and needs him and wants him. This night is the first of so many nights. It will all be alright, in the morning.

Raymond Reddington is usually so careful never to lie to himself. It's one of the secrets to his success, to his continuing survival.

But just this once, he'll make an exception.


	13. Tattoos and More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, hurt/comfort, angst, Red and Liz, fragment, AU, shame.

Elizabeth Keen has seen the very worst of human nature. In her studies, in her profession, in the nightmarish underground world she began to explore in company with Raymond Reddington.

The blacklisters the task force chases grow ever more powerful, horrific, complex to identify and capture. Or kill.

Red certainly taught her how to kill. How to live inside the heads of the monsters. Inside their hearts. To the extent that she can even allow it as a concept, inside their souls.

But none of it makes Liz ashamed.

Not the way she feels now.

Her close friend Aram, Agent Navabi, Chandra from Records Preservation - they've all taught her so much. Just pieces of a very delicate technological puzzle.

Red always claimed to like puzzles. He wouldn't like this one. Not at all.

Liz has finally put together the pieces for a very special, private hack - inside the Post Office.

When Red became an informant, his immunity deal included the verified destruction of certain booking photographs. Certain video. 

The FBI has secret chroniclers, however. Men and women who swear enforceable blood oaths that any and all history that can be preserved, will be. With the completely quixotic goal that some future generations may learn from an unfiltered, unedited data dump of so much the agency never wants remembered.

Liz learned of them by pure accident, in coded papers she found after Sam's death. Her father would have destroyed them if he anticipated dying, she was very sure of that.

Red taught her to read between invisible lines.

She perverts their secrets, everything she's learned, for a slice of her own personal hell. Her own imagined paradise.

It all may be insane. Delusional. 

Liz crouches in the cold dusty cement of the crawl space, watching the stolen images unwind on the laptop screen in front of her. They jump between black and white and color; fuzzy, and then so in focus that she has to assume someone is present, controlling the focus of the camera.

It's taken weeks to hide the equipment, batteries, power tools, and jammers up here.

The booking photographs are stark, graphic. They document each piece of clothing Red removes, the pinched tension of his clenched hands behind his head, elbows spread wide, that belies his bland smile.

The videos are worse, oddly intimate, the long stretches where he naps or exercises, the few minutes every few hours where he utilizes the open metal facilities, performs his meager ablutions.

He's not stoic; there's no absence of awareness, or lack of response to the subjugation he's enduring. Liz watches as Red just chooses life, whatever it entails, again and again.

She's so ashamed, but she needs to know.

Crouched in the chill of unheated crawl space, Liz skips through long hours, unpunctuated segments of film, to the intense moments she's seeking.

The men who hold him down with rubber gloves, scrub his convulsing body with brushes and depilatory chemicals until he lies hairless and choking on the floor.

The woman with the Taser and the old-fashioned camera with the huge lens, recording every tattoo larger than life.

The constant probing of his body cavities, mouth open wide, bent at the waist with his legs spread, and always the utter impersonality with which they touch him.

Long dead and gone Alan Fitch appears occasionally, at unexpected times, his silver head bowed as he exchanges insults with Red.

Liz can't find anyone, not one person, who offers him comfort. Who communicates with him. Who reacts to the long strings of numbers and other, unrecognizable symbols, which are tattooed on his body, armpits, groin, inner thighs.

He's a puzzle and even now, with all the pieces, she's no closer to finding her answers.

Those scars on his back. How he endured them, for her. That at least she's figured out.

But that makes no difference.

She's been in the crawl space for more than 36 hours. Liz needs to shut this down, cover her tracks, prepare herself for the congratulatory conversations about her three days in a row of vacation time. Her self-announced 'staycation'.

Defeat is thick and bitter in her mouth, even as she retreats in good order.

***

Liz lights a fire, opens a bottle of red wine she meant to save for the holidays. Turns off all the lights save a small lamp in the next room, at her bedside. She sits on the carpeted floor of her second floor walk-up right in front of the fireplace, trying to get warm.

The intercom buzzes, and her doorman's voice inserts itself into her quiet space.

"There's a Raymond to see you. Ms. Keen."

Liz uncurls from the floor, holds the intercom button.

"Send him up."

She leaves the lights down but pulls her spare weapon from her winter coat holster in the closet by the door. Peers through the peephole as Red emerges from the elevator and approaches her door, long cashmere scarf swinging at his throat, layered in a long black coat and a wool fedora and who knows how many layers of elegant suiting beneath the coat.

Liz takes another swig of the wine in her glass, which she still dangles from her left hand, loaded weapon in her right.

"What do you want, Red?" she asks him, letting him in and taking a second look down the hall to be sure Dembe has not miraculously appeared despite his obvious non-presence in the elevator.

"I come bearing gifts" he beams at her. "How lovely, a fire. Not all these flats have a real fireplace, now do they?"

Liz locks and bolts the door and comes to stand at his side in front of the fireplace.

Raymond Reddington in tight black leather gloves in the middle of the night, his tired eyes shadowed by his black fedora.

A figure to inspire abject obedience or terror, or both.

Liz drinks him in, holds out her glass.

"Here. I'll pour myself another."

Red takes the glass, sets his hat on her bare glass coffee table. She's canceled all her magazine subscriptions, along with her life insurance. Sold her books, and every piece of jewelry Tom ever bought her, and the bronzes from her Aunt Anne. Poured all her spare time and money into her failed operation.

He stands looking down into the fire as she comes to stand beside him, drinking deep from a fresh glass. Takes just a sip of the red wine.

"Why didn't you just ask me?" His tone is deep, idle, not exactly pained or reproving. More as if he has tried to figure something out, and come up short.

Liz stares directly down at the burning coals in the fireplace, feeling tears well up in the back of her eyes. He's refused to answer her questions so many times, she long ago learned to stop asking.

"Because you thought I would say no?"

Red takes another small sip of his wine, then unwinds his scarf and tosses it past her onto the couch.

She nods, still looking at the fire. She's so ashamed.

"Because you know this secret isn't mine alone to share."

Liz swallows hard. There's someone else. She's always known that. How it could it be otherwise?

Red turns towards her, lays his cool palm on the side of her face, warm from the heat of the fire.

"Why don't you just ask me?' he says, his thumb stroking the line of her jaw as he takes another sip of his wine.

She looks at him, finally manages to meet his eyes. There's so much warmth there, humor, no anger at all.

"I can't bear no" she says in a whisper, finally giving him the truth. "It's not just your secrets ..."

For all his gentleness, she'd rather shoot herself in the head than speak another word.

Red runs his forefinger from her ear to the corner of her mouth. Liz parts her lips, licks the corner of her mouth closest to his finger. Feels the tip of his finger in a brief dance with the tip of her tongue before he retreats.

"Ask me, Lizzie," he says suddenly, draining his glass and setting it down on the hearth, then turning to face her.

Oh.

"Please."

He tilts his head.

"Please. Show me."

She puts her hands at the tightly buttoned neck of her silk blouse, but he gives her a quick shake of his head, holding her eyes. No. Not an exchange. Not a trade.

"Please, Red. Raymond."

He starts to undress then.

Liz sinks to her knees, looks up in wonder.

It all comes off, so many layers of clothing. So many defenses, barriers, veneers.

The firelight is orange and crimson, casting dancing shadows that conceal nothing.

"Let's start here."

Red points to his hip, to the curling scars of a whip, the line of tattooed symbols that follow the pale white line.

Liz looks deep into his eyes, waits for his permission before tracing that thin deep line with her mouth.

He begins the story. The first of so many.

The start of a new story, a new world.

In which she is no longer ashamed. In which he is no longer alone.


	14. A Quiet Spring Morning in Maine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, G, romance, many years later. AU.

He sits upright in the high backed rocker on the porch, warmly dressed against the chill of the Maine morning. 

She makes the coffee, brings both mugs out, sits cross-legged in the porch swing next to him in her long blue cashmere coat. The one he bought her for Christmas last year, the exact color of her eyes.

"70 years old. Unbelievable."

Liz shrugs.

"It's only time, Red. Not much of an adversary, after everything else we've survived."

Banging sounds from inside the house announce the arrival of the twins in the kitchen. Cereal will be consumed, along with the last of the milk.

"Is Morris Yachts done with the service?"

The whirring of a blender joins the chaos of sounds from the interior of the big old Cape Cod. Their daughter has taken up juicing.

Liz takes another sip of her coffee, brushes a loose strand of graying hair back from her forehead.

"Yes, we're all set for the first sail of the season."

Red puts out his hand, kisses her fingers.

"Mmmm. I am so glad we don't have to drive the carpool this morning." 

Liz meets his eyes, gives his hand a meaningful squeeze.

Red rocks, Liz swings.

Three bright-headed teenagers rush out onto the porch clutching coats, backpacks, and athletic bags as their carpools pull up, honking.

Liz waves to their friends, Red just touches the brim of his hat.

There's a brief round of embraces, kisses, and schedule reminders, then the porch is quiet once again.

Liz sets down her empty coffee mug. Gives Red a sideways glance.

"So impatient, Lizzie," he chides her softly, finishing the last of his coffee.

"Always," she returns.

"What did I ever do to deserve you? To deserve this life?"

Birthdays are a time for reflection as well as celebration. Even if this day doesn't match the birth date on his drivers license.

Liz gives him the only answer she has.

"It's nothing you did. It's just, who you are."

She gets up from the porch swing, leans toward him, and lowers her voice.

"I love you, Raymond Reddington. Don't ever forget that. Now let's go upstairs and celebrate properly."

Red latches the screen door carefully behind them, then locks and bolts the kitchen door. Old habits, persistent yet unnecessary.

It's just another quiet spring morning in Maine.


	15. Until the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, AU. Liz is ready for answers.

"I cannot and I will not tell you more, Lizzie."

Raymond Reddington is angry. She's not sure if he's furious with her, the situation, or perhaps just with himself.

He's been wounded several times recently, lost key assets, twice escaped only with the increasingly perilous support of the bureau.

Elizabeth Keen is tired of pushing him for more information about her real father, Reddington's past connection to her, her role in the ongoing drama he's been orchestrating.

If she's so special, it's time for him to prove it.

"Why not?"

Liz grabs a chair, spins it and sits astraddle with her arms folded on the back, facing Red. 

He can't escape her, leaning forward on the backless stool with his shirt off and his undershirt cut open. Dembe is still picking shrapnel out of his back.

The kitchen of the supposed safe house is a bloody mess.

"If I tell you anything, they will kill you, torture and kill you, for that information."

Red sounds desperately in earnest, but Liz isn't buying it. Not this time.

"You don't think they already assume I know?"

She waves her Glock in his general direction, but neither Dembe not Red react.

Liz has been traveling with Red for the last two months, only minimally in contact with the bureau. She's seen unbelievable things, both dark and light.

Red winces and gives her a cold stare.

"I've given them no reason to think I would reveal the information," he pronounces.

There's a series of clinks as Dembe drops small fragments of metal into a pan on the kitchen table.

"Oh, I'm only here because of the FBI?" she sneers back at him. "Or am I just your little sex toy? Your divertissement?"

She's heard him describe a former lover that way. Just once. While eavesdropping.

Red rubs his eyes. Dembe frowns at her. Liz files that away for future consideration. Dembe never frowns at her.

"Lizzie ..." he begins in a strained voice. As though it's his patience that has been exhausted, not hers.

Liz glares at him.

"Red, you can't have it both ways. Either I'm your ally, a full partner, and I understand the war we're fighting, or...?"

He raises his brows, tries to smooth all expression from his face despite the twitches occasioned by Dembe probing his wounds.

"Lizzie, I have never given you any reason..."

This seems to be her afternoon for interrupting Raymond Reddington.

"You'd have to be sex on wheels to drag me through all this without any information, and given your self-admitted, extremely thorough self-restraint?"

Red lets out an angry huff of breath. His eyes turn murderously cold.

Liz is unfazed.

"Choose, Red," she says. "They either think I already know, or I'm just your foolish, infatuated young lover, in which case why wouldn't they want to torture and kill me, just to hurt you?"

Red shakes his head, the lines around his mouth growing deeper. He's grown so weary, the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced.

"And if I asked you to choose, Lizzie?"

He tosses the words off as though they're nothing, but behind him, Dembe freezes for a moment, bloody forceps hanging in the air.

"Both." 

Liz grins at triumphantly into the astonished stares of the two men for whom, just this last week, she's killed six human beings. Trained assassins, yes, but still.

"You're just as special to me as I am to you, Red," she admits. She's known for weeks, but not how to tell him. "Maybe more. Only I didn't come into this with a plan."

She tilts her head to one side, to match the angle of Red's now quizzical gaze.

"So now, I want it all. No more secrets. No more holding back."

"Together until the end?" Red tries for a light touch, fails utterly.

Liz takes him at his word.

"Yeah. I want to know everything you know. I want your body, and your mind, and your soul, if you still have one."

Red licks his lips.

"If I'm going to die in this fire of your making, I will at least know why. With the taste of you in my mouth."

Red lets out a little sound. Dembe lays one hand on Red's shoulder, sets the forceps gently down in the bowl.

"Tell her, my brother. She is ready."

Her heart in her eyes, Liz leans forward. 

Holds Red's gaze until at last he surrenders.

"Oh hell, Lizzie."

He leans in to meet her, kisses her with just a taste of the passion he's suppressed for so many lonely years.

Then finally, he begins to tell the story. And she listens.


	16. Not Her Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, fluff

Raymond Reddington has told Elizabeth Keen, repeatedly, that he is not her father. And yet still, sometimes she wonders.

His face is one of her earliest memories, recovered under hypnosis.

His back is scarred by fire. 

Red treats her with a shifting mix of deference and warmth. Advance and retreat. Never anything that could be read as more than paternal.

She dreams about him standing over her bed and looking down at her, and wakes trembling and ashamed.

It all comes to a head when she tries to access certain FBI samples, for genetic testing.

The clerk tells her there will be a delay.

That evening, Red knocks on her motel room door.

Liz lets him in and folds her arms, waiting for his inevitable comment on the shabby state of the room. It's all the bureau will pay for. But she doesn't feel safe staying in one place for more than 48 hours any more.

He looks around the room and sighs. Tosses his hat on the narrow, fake wood counter that serves as a TV stand.

"Lizzie, have a seat," he says instead, gesturing towards the saggy double bed, which is covered by a shiny polyester floral comforter.

There's only one chair in the room, so she seats herself on the bed, looks up at him. She's wearing gray sweats and her high ponytail bounces as she seats herself. The bed is raised enough on its laminate frame that her feet barely touch the floor.

"Yes, Red?" she asks him.

He's wearing a gray suit, a green tie, his customary blue jacket.

He purses his lips, then takes a seat beside her. Not close enough that their hips touch, but almost.

She looks over at him. This is going to be bad news, she's pretty sure of it. The lines under his eyes are deeper than usual, and he looks a little sad. Somehow deflated, if that adjective can be applied to the big, powerful, vital man who saved her life just two days ago, in a blacklister ambush gone horribly wrong.

Liz saw him coming towards her from her position lying on her side, chained to the cement floor, taking huge strides with a gun in each hand, lifting and falling in a ceaseless rhythm of death. So beautiful, like an avenging god.

The following morning, after debriefing at the Post Office, she put in her request for the genetic material.

Lizzie reaches out, tentatively lays her hand on his shoulder. So many layers of clothing between her fingers and his skin.

"Red, is something wrong?"

He gives her a wry smile.

"Very probably." He pauses, tilts his head a little. "I assume you are familiar with that old chestnut about begging for forgiveness?"

Has he somehow learned she's tried to access the records from his original arrest?

"The FBI doesn't generally beg for forgiveness," she informs him. All she has for a response is offense; no defense for doubting his word. But she needs to know. And she can't tell him why. Not if she's wrong.

"Lizzie, I can prove to you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I am not your father," he says in a low voice. 

She stares over at him, but he's looking away, even though his legs are now crossed towards her. 

"Please, Red ..." she begins.

"Close your eyes," he instructs her. He turns his head, looks down at her lap. As she closes her eyes, she feels him take both of her hands in his. Her fingers feel suddenly cold.

Liz closes her eyes tighter.

What is he going to say, that he can't bear for her to look at him when he tells her?

Liz sits perfectly still as she senses Red leaning towards her. He smells faintly of cologne and cigar smoke and brandy. The smell of safety.

He carried her away from the blacklister's basement hideout, wrapped in his overcoat. Surrounded by those scents in contrast to the acrid flare of the weapons, explosives, fire burning through various noxious substances.

His lips touch hers, softly. A little more firmly as she doesn't respond, frozen into immobility by disbelief.

She parts her lips, opens her mouth to the touch of his tongue.

Draws back, her eyes still closed.

"Lizzie?"

Red's voice is impossibly deep. 

Slowly, she opens her eyes.

"You're not my father," she whispers. She can't help but stare at his mouth, his lips. His kiss was so much more than she had ever imagined.

And now he's just sitting here beside her, his eyes tender, intent. His faint smile a little wistful. Red is waiting, watching for her reaction. He's poised to leave, she sees his eyes flick towards the door.

"Red?" she whispers back.

"Yes, Lizzie?"

"Can I prove to you that I'm not your daughter?"

He chuckles, squeezes her hands. Releases them.

"Of course."

She takes her turn to lean towards him, tastes his mouth. Allows her hands trace their paths over and then under his clothing, seeking the warm, bare skin she has imagined so often.

Red yields to her, breathes with her, pulls her slowly closer until she's sitting astride his thighs, pushing him back to lie back on the bed beneath her as she tugs at his clothing. 

"I want you, Red, I want you so much," she whispers, pulling her sweatshirt over her head and tossing it aside.

His fingers wind in her hair, as he smiles up at her, the widest, sweetest smile she's ever seen on his face.

"It's a good thing I'm not your father, isn't it?" he breathes, opening his mouth for her kisses once again.

Lizzie pauses, his shirt halfway unbuttoned. Leans down to kiss him once more, then alternates gentle bites with kisses down his chest to his neck, licking at his skin. Tasting him as he tugs down her sweatpants.

"Oh, such a good thing."


	17. Special

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why Liz is special to Red. Pre-Lizzington. G. Will probably become AU at some point. As always, not mine, just borrowing them.

"Uncle Ray! Uncle Ray!"

The smell of smoke. Someone tugging on his arm, his back blazing with unbelievable pain in response. Blood in his mouth.

"Uncle Ray!"

The voice of a desperate child.

Lizzie.

Raymond Reddington opens one eye.

She's in her nightgown, curls falling over her tear-streaked face. 

The house is ablaze around them.

Lizzie.

Red drags himself to hands and knees, feeling the burned skin on his back crackling and splitting horribly, fluids and blood dripping to spatter the floor.

"We have to get out!" she screams.

He can barely see through the smoke. 

"Is there another door out?" he asks her hoarsely, forcing himself to his knees, and then to stand, hunched over like an old man. He's never visited her at this new house before.

"Back door."

She tugs at his right hand, guides him down a smoldering hall. Leads him staggering in agony from the burning house, a stuffed bunny clutched in her other hand.

Behind the hedge that screens her swing set from the house, he pauses, leans forward, takes great gulping breaths of the clean night air. He can hear distant sirens, the roar of the fire as it consumes the small wood-framed house and jumps to the pine trees in the front yard.

"Uncle Ray? Where are Mommy and Daddy?"

His false friends, who poured gasoline on him, set him alight, and left him to die. They can't have known Lizzie was in the house. She was supposed to be at a sleep-over up the street. Not in the house when they set it ablaze.

Even in the depths of this betrayal, he can't quite believe that of them.

"They asked me to take care of you," he tells her. "To keep you safe."

She nods trustingly. He's been her honorary uncle for more than a year, eaten so many meals with the family. Attended her last birthday party.

What better revenge than to hide her away? Let them think she died in the fire?

She takes his hand again. The way she did when she saved his life.

His Lizzie. She's beyond special to him. Shuddering in pain, on the very edge of shock, Red vows to himself that he's going to make sure she has a safe and happy childhood from this point forward. A successful career, in whatever field she chooses. Because all the future years of his life belong to her now, if she ever needs him.

He'll need to do something about her memories of this night, to protect her. Red knows one man, at least, that he can trust with that secret.

"Let's go. I want you to meet a very good friend of mine, named Sam."


	18. Keeping Her Safe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, a fight, fluff. G.

"You would hurt or kill anyone, wouldn't you, if you think that would keep me safe?!?"

Liz is almost yelling, despite sitting so close to Red in the back of his customary sedan. Bulletproof, tinted glass hides them from the scene of chaos beyond, but he can't hide from her.

Not anymore.

He's killed her father, made Tom disappear, put everyone at the Post Office in danger again and again. This last blacklister almost slaughtered an entire school bus loaded with toddlers.

"Or save anyone, if I thought they could help me protect you." Red's tone is sour.

"You didn't save Meera."

His lips purse but he holds her gaze.

"I'm not omnipotent, if that's what you're thinking," he sneers. His forehead gleams with moisture. She's rarely seen him sweat.

"You need to understand that working with me, it's just work. Nothing more. Nothing personal," Liz tells him.

Red sighs, folds his gloved hands in his lap. As if he's deliberately not reaching for her. Or reaching for his weapon.

When their FBI back-up failed to react fast enough, she watched him kill his way through the blacklister's men like an avenging demon. Hot knife through butter would be an accurate way to describe it, if the resulting pools of blood resembled butter rather than thick red wine, drying dark and crusty as the evidence team places their countless tags preparatory to photographing the carnage.

Liz needs to wait at the scene to be debriefed. Perhaps it was an unwise choice to wait in the car with Red. Adrenaline buzzes in her ears, makes her molars ache.

She presses on.

"If I die, if you sacrifice me, that's just the job."

He shakes his head.

"Never. I will never sacrifice you."

"My job is to protect the public, not myself."

He shakes his head again. It seems that once more, they are talking at cross purposes.

Liz used to think she and Red had some special bond. Then she was sure he was just using her to find the Fulcrum.

Now she's half-way convinced that everything he says and does around her is just part of some elaborate game he's playing with himself, the way he sits in the park and plays both sides of the chessboard.

"Red, how can you expect me to live with myself, if you save me, but let a busload of innocent children die as a result?"

He frowns.

"No one died today who didn't deserve to die," he reproves her.

Just because today was another chapter in the ongoing story of 'Raymond Reddington Saves the Day' doesn't mean that story can go on forever.

She doesn't know how to say that to him. Explain that she's always expected to die in the line of duty. Never planned to live to be even this old, as a matter of fact.

He tilts his head.

"You came for me, at The Factory."

Now it's her turn to shake her head, the drying blood in her hair scratching at the back of her neck. 

"That was my duty, Red."

"Because you might actually care about me?"

His voice is light, his glance at her casual, but their shoulders are almost touching. She can feel the spark of his attention in the air as clearly if he laid his hand over hers. He hasn't touched her at all since he pulled her from the blacklister's dying grasp. Red's masterful shot came so close to her face she almost remembers the heat of the bullet.

Liz looks down at her hands. She's rubbing her scar so hard it hurts.

"There's a reason married couples don't serve together," she says quietly, trying to find a way to make him understand. "We aren't criminals, we have to be objective. We have to be able to make the hard choices."

Then she looks over him and flushes. Red has lived through more than twenty years of hard choices. She's never going to be able to get through to him. She feels impossibly young.

Red is scratching his head, a confused little frown wrinkling his brow.

"Lizzie? Are you by any chance proposing to me?"

What?!?

Liz runs through the last few lines of their conversation again. Stares down at her scar.

She's such an idiot. She's never going to able to look him in the face again.

He reaches over, places his gloved right hand over her bare hands, now clasped together in her lap.

"The answer to that question is yes," he says in an airy tone. Gives her hands a firm little pat. "You'll need to leave the FBI, of course. Which will be difficult for you, considering how far you came - but consider my plight? I'll have to speak only to Ressler!"

Liz turns her eyes up at him in disbelief.

Red chuckles, gives her hands another pat.

"I do respect your beliefs, Lizzie, but you must learn to respect mine, in turn."

His voice hardens.

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you. Whatever the state of our private ... relationship."

He's joking with her. A moment before, Liz wanted the earth to swallow her up, and now she's smiling back at Red in unbelievable relief.

"So shall I consider us engaged?"

She tries for a light tone, feels his fingers close too hard on her wrist beside her scar. Only for a second. But she'll have bruises to show for it, for sure.

"Of course," he grins amiably. Mask fully in place.

There's a knock at the window. Ressler. They're ready to debrief her now.

Liz swallows hard, unable to say anything for fear of breaking down completely.

"Go on, Lizzie," says Red in a warm, encouraging tone. "I'll be here waiting, when you're done."

She nods and unlocks the door. Ressler opens it, glares past her at Red.

She looks back over her shoulder as she steps from the car.

Red is mopping his brow with his pocket handkerchief. He gives her a crooked little smile.

She leans back toward the interior of the car.

"Thank you for waiting," she says.

Thank you for saving me. Thank you for making me smile. Thank you for understanding me.

His smile widens.

"I'll wait as long as it takes."

As Liz walks away, she hears the words he didn't speak ringing in her ears. 

'Because you're worth it.'


	19. So Demanding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, established relationship, fluff

Raymond Reddington rolls over in bed and stares at the dark mop of straight hair decorating the pillow beside him.

Elizabeth Keen sleeps every bit as soundly as he does poorly, lightly. 

It's not just the easy sleep of youth. She sleeps like a woman with nothing on her conscience.

Red eases himself from bed, pulls on a long velvet robe, slides his cold feet into matching slippers. Behind him in bed, Liz doesn't even stir as he lets himself out of the bedroom and closes the door after him.

"Raymond?" Dembe is eating macarons and raspberry sorbet in the kitchen.

Red takes a seat opposite him at the round maple table, reaches out for the spoon. Takes it from Dembe's hand.

"Nothing. Not a nightmare. Just can't sleep."

He takes one creamy bite after another.

Dembe looks towards the bedroom, looks away.

Red gives a little shake of his head.

"She's so young."

"You knew that before, Raymond."

Dembe crunches down on a chocolate macaron.

Technically correct. Red certainly knew her age. Just not how it would feel to spend every day and night around someone that young. That energetic.

"She's older than I am, you do remember that?"

Red looks up from the sorbet as Dembe laughs, shaking his head.

"You were never so demanding," Red answers.

Dembe's grin widens.

"Not around you," he responds in a low, suggestive tone.

"Touche," returns Red in a gloomy voice. He's eaten all the sorbet.

"Red?"

Lizzie is standing at the bedroom door, clad only in a short, emerald green nightgown that leaves very little to the imagination. Her dark hair tumbles over her pale, bare shoulders.

"Oh, hi, Dembe," she greets him, pressing a kiss to his cheek as she snags a lemon macaron. "Late for a visit, isn't it?"

Dembe shrugs. He has a key to every safe house they locate, appearing and disappearing on some schedule of his own.

Red looks up at her, not even bothering to hide the spoon. She'll know what he's been eating, the instant she kisses him.

She leans down, takes a brief taste of his mouth.

"There's more in the back of the freezer," she announces smugly. 

Red lids his eyes at her, grins happily as she saunters across the kitchen and bends at the waist to retrieve another pint of the same sorbet from the bottom freezer drawer.

Her silk night gown rides up as Liz bends lower, evidently aware of his attention.

She knows Dembe has his back to the kitchen. This display is only for Red.

"Lizzie?" he cautions her.

She's going to kill him, at this rate. His heart races faster as she sets her feet a little wider, bends a little deeper. 

Dembe chuckles, snags and eats the last macaron.

"There's more sorbet?" He pantomimes turning, then moves very slowly as he turns in his seat.

Liz is standing, facing Dembe with the sorbet held out before her, before Red has a chance to say anything.

"Why thank you, Elizabeth," Dembe responds, accepting the sorbet, then taking the spoon back out of Red's trembling hand. He pulls off the lid, digs in, takes an enormous bite.

Liz grins, watching him eat.

"Well, I've had enough," Red announces, standing and pulling the belt of his robe a little tighter before heading back to the bedroom.

"I could use a little more," returns Liz, following close behind him as Dembe chuckles again. "See you at breakfast, Dembe."

The door has barely closed behind them when Red feels Liz press herself against his back, her arms coming around him to open his robe. Her knowing hands make short work of his token resistance, her mouth busy at the sensitive curve of his neck, murmuring an arousing mixture of endearments and entreaties.

"Oh, Lizzie." The robe slides to the floor, leaving him naked and trembling.

She knows exactly what to say now, that innocent mouth turned so wicked. So filthy.

Their first night together, Red promised her anything, everything.

Liz takes him at his word, again and again.

To the FBI, to the criminal underworld, he's still the Concierge of Crime.

But here at home, he's just Lizzie's lover. Anything he fantasizes, anything he wants, anything he needs, he's promised to tell her.

She's promised to deliver.

Red won't sleep again tonight. He'll be sore in the morning.

At least they'll be sleep-deprived together.


	20. Pillow Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lizzington, established relationship, fluff. This is the last in this series of short pieces; I may start another series, or just work on longer stories.

"Not India again?"

Liz blinks sleepily over at Red. She's curled towards him, her pillow folded in half under the curve of her neck so she can look down at him.

He's lying flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling. She can feel the bed shift as he stretches his legs, minute movements to ease his back.

That was a little energetic, even for them.

"Emerging markets. Need to get to know the players," he responds. As she smiles at him, remembering, Red slits his eyes toward her.

"You do like the food," he comments. "And the shopping."

Liz has to contain Red's enthusiasm for purchasing her anything and everything that she admires. Her apartment is starting to look like Aladdin's cave.

"Ressler and I have that re-certification class," she responds. "And Dembe is probably ready to have some time alone with you."

"Me, Dembe, and a conference room full of people speaking Marathi," Red answers her, his eyelashes fluttering as he tilts his chin up a little, then back down. Stretching his neck. "I still want you with me. Always."

She can read his body language so well now, with an intimate knowledge not previously available to her when she was just a profiler, he was just a criminal.

He's looking forward to the trip. Even though he doesn't sleep well, without her.

"How many nights?" she asks him.

He shrugs, stretches his chin upwards once more, then pulls his pillow under his head and turns on his side to face her. Their knees touch beneath the flannel sheet and layers of blankets.

"At least five," he murmurs. "Much too long."

Their eyes meet in perfect understanding.

"Even one night is too long," she whispers back.

"Agreed."

They gaze at each other for a moment, then Liz surrenders. Lifts her head off her pillow with an effort, leans over to hold his lips in a long, tender kiss.

His back is sore. He needs to lie still.

"Good-night, sweetheart," he tells her, his eyes already closed. 

Liz snuggles back down into the curve of her pillow and blinks against drifting away, watching for the moment his familiar, beloved face goes slack with sleep. He looks so open, so vulnerable.

He may be on the other side of the globe tomorrow, but right now Red is hers. All hers.

"Good-night," she whispers back.


End file.
